Tag Archives: Isaac Newton

The oldest known version of the Cinderella story dates back to ancient Greece – how ironic.

Cyprus was, for many years, an idyllic island – originally settled by Mycenaean Greeks around 4,000 years ago. Known for its beauty and its beaches, it became a tax haven before 2004 when it joined the European Union. Its economy benefitted enormously – Cyprus did, indeed, go to the Ball.

The Sisters turn Ugly

Yet Cyprus is now being rejected by its two ugly sisters – the EU and Russia, who have conspired with Cyprus throughout the last ten or so years by enabling illicit money to flow into the country. Cyprus has benefitted from its relationships with the EU and Russia but those sisters are now turning ugly.

Isaac Newton was an alchemist but even he could not transmogrify base elements into gold. Modern counterparts are far more able to magically transform base elements into gold on a massive scale that would amaze even the alchemists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Now that money is digitized, base elements (the profits made from illicit activities) can be changed in seconds within banks situated in secret jurisdictions.

The essence of the problems in Cyprus is that a vacation destination, home to many hard-working and energetic people, has been itself transmogrified into an offshore banking centre that is many times the size of the rest of the economy. That the part of Cyprus within the European Union is close to bankruptcy is astonishing enough to many. Even more astonishing is the evidence that is mounting about a small country enriched in the short-term by a Faustian sale of its soul to Russian criminals.

Cyprus is an island with around 1 million people and a GDP of around $24 billion. Some years ago, the government of Cyprus decided (or was persuaded) that attracting huge sums of digitized money from wherever it could get it would increase their income. So, through increased secrecy laws, a multitude of double-taxation agreements with other countries and low tax rates in Cyprus, it created itself as a tax haven. Russians, for many years with interests in the country, flocked to Cyprus – preceded by their money. Cyprus became a home of money laundering as well as a tourist destination. The combination has been very powerful.

The banking crisis

When the sub-prime crisis hit in 2007/8, Cyprus was enjoying substantial growth. However, it had followed the high interest rates in Greece and invested in Greek banks. When they failed so famously (requiring massive “haircuts” from those investing in them), Cyprus – massively over-extended in them – suffered badly.

While its two ugly sisters worked out a way to enable Cyprus to be the beneficiary of illicit hot money for many years, one ugly sister (the EU) rebels at the thought of such mismanagement leading to a call on it to prop it up. While the EU is full of tax havens – from the City of London to Luxembourg to Austria – the political will of members of the EU such as Germany to continue to prop up Cyprus is vanishing fast. Hard-working German taxpayers, already riled by the needs of Greece, the political anarchy in Italy and the mass youth unemployment in Spain, have been further spooked by the machinations of discredited politicians in Cyprus – already in hock to the Russian mafia on a grand scale. This is why they demanded a contribution from Cypriots that resulted in the mass demonstrations in Nicosia and elsewhere as the middle classes were confronted by the fact that their insured deposits in Cypriot banks were not, after all, insured against the EU.

Where’s the Fairy Godmother?

Cyprus now realizes that its pact with the devil (Russian mafia) and its focus on becoming a secretive, tax haven has turned sour. To remain in the EU, it needs to save its banks. To save its banks, it needs to raise significant sums from its people (in terms of further tax revenue or long-term bond issues) and also from other, overseas, depositors. The latter are mainly Russians – and much of that money is illicit. The mere thought of taxing the Russian mafia is enough to make the story of Cinderella into a horror film – that might make the new wave of horror films based on fairy tales (such as Hansel and Gretel – Witch Hunters) look insipid by comparison.

There appears to be no Fairy Godmother who will let Cinders go to the Ball. It seems to be the case that Cyprus is between the rock and the hard place – between two ugly sisters: one that has plied it with funny money for years, the other that has conspired with it to do so and stayed quiet until now.

Greece has suffered five years of depression. The problems for Cyprus are only just beginning but whereas Greece’s problems remain its own, Cyprus is in much more danger – it is in hock to a mafia-ridden nation and appears to have few friends within the EU who are willing to turn it around. For its people, this could be a disaster – economically and also in terms of the way of life for its citizens. The EU allowed this situation to develop – it should not be blind to the plight of its smallest member. It is enough that fear has been struck into the citizens of Cyprus and to those in Italy, Greece, Spain and maybe France, who now know that bank deposits are not theirs any longer. Bank runs come from times like this.

Allowing Cyprus to be so wayward for so long is bad enough – to allow it to go completely off the rails and into the clutches of a mafia state would be too far. Cyprus needs a short-term remedy and a long-term plan to get it away from the drug of tax havens. The EU has to turn from Ugly Sister into the Fairy Godmother (and stay the course) or this may well be a Lehman moment that will not easily be forgotten.